Rochelle Jordan - Play With The Changes [Album]

On her first album in seven years, Rochelle Jordan’s house and garage inspired hits are spacious, sexy and confession filled. With its brave mix of otherworldly vocals, delicate lyrics and enthralling night club energy, ‘Play With The Changes’ will take your breath away.

You can really hear Rochelle Jordan’s London roots in her new record, ‘Play With The Changes’. Prior to a move to Toronto, the experimental inclined R&B artist grew up in the UK’s capital in a Jamaican household where she was ever immersed in a wide array of music, spanning her brother’s ample drum ‘n’ bass, house and R&B record collection to the lovers’ rock reggae and classic gospel cherished by her parents. Now based out of LA, on her latest album Jordan has largely opted to tap into the sounds of her adolescence, mixing her signature confessional R&B lyricism and ethereal, soul-dipped vocals with the rhythms and structures of the Brit underground dance scene.

Produced by Jordan's long-time collaborator KLSH, alongside Machinedrum and Jimmy Edgar, the 12-track album is a treasure trove of nostalgic clubby bangers powered by sizzling, propulsive rhythms to yank you onto the dancefloor, with opening single ‘Love You Good’ starting the party at full throttle. Jordan’s heady, breathy vocals sound simply gorgeous over the frenetic drum & bass instrumentals as she consoles lonely hearts with words like, “I know that you feel so misunderstood,” steadily dropping between the dizzying beat patterns.

The music hops back and forth between nostalgia and a more futuristic feel, with Jordan maintaining an even spread between sounds across the record for a slick transition from beginning to end. Tracks like the spacey, synthy hit ‘Next 2 You’ and harmonic ‘Nothing Left’ lean into the future, but it’s the lively, backwards facing tunes like ‘All Along’, ‘Already’, ‘Dancing Elephants’ and ‘Situation’ that really catch your attention, perhaps owing to the fact it’s been a million years since we’ve hit the club and it just all sounds so… Exciting! While these reworkings of old school arrangements are intoxicating, fans of Jordan’s more R&B led album ‘1021’ shouldn’t despair, as the melodic ‘Lay’ and trap influenced ‘Count It’ likely have the sound you’re looking for.

While they’re luscious and full of life, these are songs where Jordan explores depression, homesickness and struggles in the music industry and therefore can strike a bit of a blue and wistful note. The lyrics to ‘Broken Steel’ are particularly affecting, with Jordan teaming up with rapper Farrah Fawx to reveal the unjust pressures placed on them due to their race. Jordan offers some of her most thoughtful lyrics here, delivering powerful gems, such as, “I am delicate with strings that I created / For a world that's always taking pieces of who I am / Without anything worth trading.”

Jordan elaborates, "Play With the Changes represents all the things I love about creating music. Freedom, imagination, colors, blending sounds, frequency, and feeling. Every story I wrote of self-discovery, anxiety, blackness, control, boldness, and honesty are all pieces of what I personally needed to learn and understand over the past few years. All the sides of my style, sound, and my desire this time around to knit R&B and dance music together in my own way, on one record."

While ‘Play With The Changes’ doesn’t skip over any sadness, its dynamic genre-hopping, experimentalism and irresistible energy will ultimately uplift, send you spinning and get you moving all through the night.